Climate deal achievable, says Brown

Prime Minister Gordon Brown is expected to insist that a deal to avert catastrophic climate change is "achievable" at next week's UN-sponsored conference in Copenhagen.

Speaking three days ahead of the opening of the crucial two-week gathering, Mr Brown will say that the world is already halfway to reaching the changes needed to limit average global warming to 2C.

Action taken unilaterally by countries around the world is already projected to take five billion tonnes of greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere by 2020, he will say.

The task at Copenhagen is to close the "five billion tonne gap" between this figure and the 10 billion tonnes which climate change expert Lord Stern believes is necessary.

Mr Brown will make his comments as he answers questions from young people at a pre-Copenhagen event hosted by the Department for Energy and Climate Change in London.

In his opening remarks, the Prime Minister will say: "We are halfway to a climate deal for the world. A deal at Copenhagen which averts catastrophic climate change is our aim, and it is achievable.

"To keep global warming to a maximum of 2C, global greenhouse gas emissions need to fall from their present level of about 47 billion tonnes to below 20 billion tonnes in 2050."

Mr Brown will cite the influential 2006 report by Lord Stern on the economics of climate change, which argued that to reach the 2050 target, the world would have to cut emissions to 35 billion tonnes by 2030 and about 44 billion tonnes by 2020.

Mr Brown will say: "Today the world is on a path to emissions of 54 billion tonnes by 2020. So we need to take out 10 billion tonnes through this agreement.

"So far, unilateral action by countries around the world to reduce their emissions is already projected to take 5 billion tonnes out of the atmosphere. So we are halfway there. Now at Copenhagen we must achieve the other half."